End of Lent ~ Anastasi
You say: "Christos Aness-tees" & They respond: "Alee-thos Anes-tees"

'Christ has risen' & 'He has truely risen'

The climax of the seven weeks of Sarakosti (Lent) is during the midnight Anastasis (resurrection) mass held on Saturday night in tens of thousands of churches all over Greece and in Greek Orthodox churches worldwide (though time zones vary widely, there being some 3 million Greeks in North America alone).

Churches fill up with people beginning around ten at night, and often become densely packed by the last hour before midnight, many of them with standing room only, as the priests intone the holy liturgy. At the stroke of midnight, all of the lights go out in the church, the intense and sudden darkness symbolizing the passage of Christ through the underworld. Then the priest appears with a long lighted candle, and he chants the words that announce the resurrection of Christ: see Greek Easter next